We have two confessions to make before we tell you about the story. The first is to say that there are two missing pages from the copy of the book we used, 223 and 224, the last two pages of chapter 14, rather an exciting moment in the story. We shall try to get photocopies of these pages, but it will take time.

The second one will make you laugh: The Chinese Admiral Wong-Li, who plays a big part in the book, was always being read by the audiobook program as "wong fifty one". No doubt you can see why. So I changed his name, with apologies, to Wong-lih, thus restoring the correct pronunciation, and not making a huge difference to the story.

Frobisher is a cashiered Royal Navy ex-officer. He is approached to run some arms to the rebels in Korea, and thus make his fortune. This fails, and the arms get into the hands of the legitimate government. After some vicissitudes he finds himself in China, and talking to the above admiral, who offers him the command of a battleship, with the prospect of taking part in a war against Japan. He does this but loses his ship in a storm towards the end of the book. Meanwhile he has found the lost millions hidden away by Genghiz Khan many centuries beforehand. He has no hesitation in purloining these, and eventually on getting back to England, buying his way back into grace by presenting the nation with a number of brand-new battleships, for which bit of sleaze he is given a baronetcy, and restored to the Navy List.

It makes a good audiobook.

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